Secure Facilities Interpreter Recruitment and Retention Program

The Secure Facilities Interpreter Recruitment and Retention Program identifies skill-based gaps that prevents interpreters from becoming proficient with working in secure facility settings, causes of interpreter burn-out and fatigue, and challenges posed by these unique locations when recruiting interpreters.

Interpreter Support Systems

Interpreters who work in secure facilities are scarce and the few who currently do are encountering burn-out and fatigue. This is creating a barrier for deaf individuals receiving treatment within secure facility settings. To overcome these barriers, we have established support systems for interpreters who either are interested in or are currently working in secure facility settings.

Help make Minnesota secure facilities accessible by taking advantage of one of our support system programs! These have been implemented for interpreters to help navigate their experiences when working in secure facility settings.

Individualized debriefing and consulting with a self-care specialist

Process Personally Challenging Material in a Supportive, Confidential, and Productive Debriefing Session with Arlyn Anderson

Peer Support and Consultation Project for Interpreters in Secure Facility Settings

The Peer Support and Consultation Project for Interpreters (PSCPI) is a unique, experiential approach to confronting and ameliorating compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatization.

Tailored workshops and trainings to become proficient with working in secure facilities

Educational opportunities and trainings centered around interpreting in secure facility settings.

Personalized ASLIS staff who are well versed working with interpreters in secure facility settings

ASLIS staff is here to support our interpreters! ASLIS staff is available to meet with interpreters working in secure facilities to customize the program to meet their needs.

Individualized Debriefing and Consulting with a Self-Care Specialist

Image of a woman wearing an olive green three quarter sleeve blouse with her arms crossed in front of her body.

Arlyn Anderson
MA, PCC, CPCC, CI/CT

No one wishes for messy interpreting interactions or personally difficult situations. I’m no fan of the hard stuff. Yet, over time I have come to know the rich material and insights the hard stuff can offer. I feel strongly that ignoring or burying discomfort is a waste – and is a time-limited strategy. When we can understand the difficulty and allow ourselves to explore what has happened, we have the opportunity to integrate it and move forward. This is why I offer short term coaching and debriefing of emotionally-charged or personally difficult assignments.

Here’s what I suggest. If you find yourself bothered by a particular situation or interaction, consider me a resource. I am specially equipped to support you and also help you move through and beyond the unsettling situation. If it is beyond my expertise, I will also help you consider other options.

These discussions are intended to help interpreters process unsettling experiences in a productive manner. No judgment.

Self-Management: Managing Strong Emotions in Professional Settings

Explore the neuroscience of strong emotions, drawing from the fields of neuroscience, mental health interpreting and professional coaching. Engage in interesting, relevant & transformative discussion.

This individualized consultation is designed as an educational and personally transformational experience for professional interpreters who have occasion to work in emotionally-charged settings. It is also appropriate for interpreting students who are interested in developing this competency.

Participants will explore the neuroscience involved in experiencing strong emotions. We will discuss short and long-term strategies for recognizing and managing strong feelings and redirecting negative inner dialogue. Arlyn draws from the fields of neuroscience, mental health interpreting and professional coaching to craft an experience that is interesting, relevant and potentially transformative for participants.

This individualized session affords participants the safety, time and opportunity to deepen the connection between personal well-being and professional effectiveness.

Psychological Mindedness: Self-Awareness and Self-Care as Professional Skills

Use current findings in positive psychology and neuroscience to connect self-knowledge and self-care with our effectiveness as professional interpreters.

This individualized consultation uses current findings in positive psychology and neuroscience to make the connection between self-knowledge, self-care and our effectiveness as professional interpreters. In order to maintain neutrality, impartiality and to employ secure ethical boundaries, it is essential for interpreters to understand themselves. We cannot manage what we do not know is there.

When professionals have the personal capacity to understand, tolerate and manage their thoughts and emotions it contributes to an atmosphere of trust and collaboration with consumers. It is critical that professionals develop intentional and gentle practices for self-care and recovery in order to stay healthy and whole in this profession. This 1-1 session will help professional interpreters discover tools for increasing resilience and recovery in professionally challenging settings.

Professional Resilience: Briefing and Debriefing Difficult Assignments

Bring an actual difficult or painful interpreting experience and explore the essence of the discomfort. Examine the experience for its impact and lessons to Integrate the experience and move forward.

The focus of this unique individualized session is to explore the rich material that exists at the heart of our most difficult and unwanted professional moments. It is an opportunity to examine an actual experience in a safe, confidential and productive conversation. No one wishes for messy interpreting interactions or personally difficult situations, yet it compounds the loss to bury the insights that can be gained from an intelligent and compassionate examination. It is a time-limited strategy for professionals to ignore or bury discomfort.

In this consultation we will aim to understand the essence of a difficult experience and mine it for its lessons. Participants have the opportunity to integrate the experience and move forward.

The Silencing Response: Vicarious Trauma, Compassion Fatigue and Resilience

Explore and identify effective strategies for managing professional stress conditions and building resilience. Learn the trajectory of compassion fatigue and the ‘silencing response.’

The focus of this unique individualized session will be developing resilience and finding strategies, solutions for managing vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue and burnout. These conditions can lead to degraded professionalism, diminished compassion and well-being.

Participants will engage in a supportive facilitated conversation where we will identify and discuss how these conditions may be transformed in our own lives and practice. In this session we will explore and identify effective strategies for managing professional stress conditions and building resilience.

Peer Support and Consultation Project for Interpreters in Secure Facility Settings

The Peer Support and Consultation Project for Interpreters (PSCPI) in Secure Facility Settings is a unique, experiential approach to confronting and ameliorating compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatization. These conditions have the potential to erode attitude, self-management, neutrality, community, professionalism, and overall effectiveness of interpreters. Intelligent protective factors are integrated into the design of monthly PSCPI meetings. The groups provide a fresh, supportive and challenging environment where interpreters can learn and share self-management tools while reviewing, reflecting and sharing the sources and impacts of professional stress. Through this unique sharing, members lessen the impact of this type of stress on their lives and the increase the quality of their personal and professional relationships.

In the broadest sense, the goal of all interpreters, including medical and mental health interpreters, is to work effectively and comfortably in the many and varied settings we encounter. Interpreters are on the front-lines of patient care provision, working with sex offenders, survivors of abuse, and more. We all work with people who have experienced oppression, pain and sometimes trauma, simply by being part of a linguistic and cultural minority. Certainly that oppression is systemic – sometimes that system includes their own families. Part of our work will bring us into close proximity with intensity, trauma and oppression. Naturally, there are profound personal, professional and societal benefits to working in these settings. There are also unavoidable negative consequences that we need to acknowledge. Interpreters everywhere have developed unique short and long-term strategies for managing the ‘shadow’ side of our work.

Arlyn Anderson
MA, PCC, CPCC, CI/CT

Monthly sessions begin Jan. 2021
Limited Seats Available!

It is critical that interpreters and the systems that employ interpreters, recognize that as a result of working in these more ‘highly charged’ settings, there is increased risk for vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, among other occupational hazards, too. Medical personnel, corrections, police, attorneys, among others, are vulnerable to these conditions that lead to diminished professionalism and zest for life. The consequences can be devastating for all who work in close proximity to the pain and trauma of others.

Arlyn Anderson and Marty Barnum designed PSCPI to counteract, minimize and reverse the effects of occupational stress. PSCPI meetings have become a favorite with interpreters.

Factors that help reduce the impact of occupational stress, such as vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue, include:

Peer validation
Normalization of experiences
Increased awareness of professional options
Shared resources
Feeling as though one is a part of a supportive professional network

The erosion of well-being and attitude (such as, respect, neutrality, open-mindedness, flexibility) are among the consequences of compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma and secondary trauma. Resilience, authenticity, trust and professional flexibility are among the consequences of belonging to a supportive professional network such as PSCPI.

What will I gain from participating in PSCPI?

Awareness of the risks of occupational stress. Knowledge is power and can prevent or lessen the impacts of vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue;
Sharing experiences with other interpreters offers social support, normalization of experiences, amends cognitive distortions, and helps to maintain objectivity;
Groups are an opportunity to reconnect with others;
Members share potential coping resources;
You will offer and receive validation and support;
Reinforce and broaden options for personal coping strategies;
It’s an opportunity to share new information about the work;
Group is a good place to vent feelings in a productive, positive, professional and confidential manner;
Group provides support for dealing with the aftereffects of intensity;
Increasing your professional network decreases professional isolation;
Members have the opportunity to Increase objectivity, empathy and compassion;
We have fun, go deep and laugh a lot!

The Secure Facilities Interpreter Recruitment and Retention program is provided by ASLIS and is supported by grant funding from the Minnesota Department of Human Services, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Division.